Review comments

I graduated from Odyssey-Magellan 5 years ago. I can say, without a doubt, every teacher in this program is more than ready to meet the needs of gifted students. I feel that my continued success in advanced courses can be attributed to the skills, character, and resolve that were fostered during my time at Odyssey-Magellan. For better or worse the students in this program develop close ties with each other, we often thought of it as a "second family." And, as with any family, conflict is expected and dutifully resolved. As for the concerns regarding foreign language classes mentioned in other posts; children selected for this program are more than capable of learning and applying foreign language skills. Language classes are only a small part of the wonderful education any student receives at Odyssey-Magellan. The teachers don't "skim" topics in any classes, as indicated by anecdotal and empirical evidence. The curriculum is advanced! But any student selected for admission is able to succeed if they work hard. I will never regret my decision to enroll at Odyssey-Magellan.

School functions on a very advanced academic curriculum, very little social enrichment. Gruff teacher and administrator. Plenty of bullying in unsupervised settings. Rated as top school but this is based on test scores only. Don't be fooled.

Has it's pluses and minuses. Same teacher taught math all 4 years our daughter was there. She had a mono focused style of teaching. Could not explain things in more than one way. Had concerns which were confirmed this year by her Kaleidoscope teacher that Odyssey was skimming math topics in order to cover more ground. Kids often can not actually compute the processes only know the meanings and surface of a process. Some good things there but also tends to make kids intense, as they become self absorbed- parents are partially to blame for their'gifted child's' behavior letting them free on their behavior and rule the roost. On a whole things were fairly good but question when is it advanced and when is it 'speed reading' for the sake of saying it's advanced.

I started odyssey in 6th grade and also completed the Magellan program as well. I am glad I attended because it got me into more advanced classes in highschool, but it came at a price. At Odyssey/Magellan I felt like I didn't recieve much teacher support and I needed some due to the fact I would become frustrated with the schoolwork because of my perfectionism. Also, the French program at the school isn't as good as I hoped. I hardly retained anything I learned during French class because we basically just worked out of the book and learned a bunch of phrases. We really didn't understand sentence structure at all. It was basically just strict english-to-french translation, no immersion or anything. Studies have shown that is not the best way to learn a language either. Odyssey/Magellan did not meet my expectaions unfortunately.

Odyssey/Magellan is a great learning expirience for children of all ages. Trust me, I go there. Our teachers, there aren't many, make up for it in their amazing skillls. There is a special bond in each class. Since you are with the same people for years, you become closer (friendship-wise) than any other class I have ever been in. : )

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